Malta has an economic conundrum to face. One of the biggest issues consistently reported by businesses in a myriad of different sectors is a staff shortage and a lack of skills in the already existing workforce.

This is a problem that has long been brewing, and which was mitigated for many years by the importation of third country nationals (TCNs) in order to make up the numbers.  This was the strategy of Joseph Muscat when he was Prime Minister - lest we forget he famously said that these workers were necessary in order to fund people's pensions.

But now the moment of reckoning has arrived - people are frustrated by overpopulation and all the consequences that it has brought, and Robert Abela's government has not just acknowledged this frustration, but committed to addressing it.

Finance Minister Clyde Caruana's Budget speech was telling in this regard: "The future of tomorrow demands a different recipe from the past.  It requires a recipe of quality, not numbers.  That's why it's time to close that chapter. It's a chapter which gave us results, but today, from tomorrow, it is consigned to the past," he said.

Yet in itself this creates a conundrum.  Businesses still feel that there is a shortage in the working force.  We need only look at the Chamber of SME's third quarter SME Barometer which was published this week as an example.

The SME Barometer asked respondents to name the issue which is most hindering their day to day operation as a business, and 28% responded with staff shortages.  This was the issue which was highlighted the most.

Also impacting this factor is that more and more Maltese youths are leaving the country.  The most recent EY Generate Youth survey from 2022 shows that 72% of Gen-Z and 77% of millennials would rather live outside of Malta.  This is a veritable brain drain in the offing.

So here's the problem that the government has to face: a strong majority of Maltese youths want to leave the country, and a strong majority of Maltese are frustrated by the wanton importation of foreign labour into the country.

What the government is seeking to emphasis is on quality - and quality of life is the best thing to keep Maltese youths in the country.  That however is not easy to achieve, and a lot of the issues currently affecting the lack of quality of life are directly correlated to Malta's population increase.

The solution must also come from outside the government: from the business community itself across many sectors to accept that the country needs to take this direction towards quality if it wants to improve the people's quality of life. 

That might come at a cost. Some businesses might even close down. But such is the circle of life - one business closes and another, perhaps with a better model, replaces it.

The impending economic shift that everybody seems to agree is needed will not be easy and will have consequences for some.  There will also be conundrums and dilemmas.

With more Maltese youths wanting to leave, but with the people and the government wanting to stem the tide of foreign workers - and while businesses continue to highlight staff shortages as a big issue - it's clear that the labour force is going to be one of the biggest conundrums of all.